


Shadows

by mischief_managed_7



Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Bullying, Depression, Family, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-17
Updated: 2018-05-17
Packaged: 2019-05-08 04:38:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14686650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mischief_managed_7/pseuds/mischief_managed_7
Summary: My take on what happened the night Elias and the Bakkoush family heard about what happened to Even. Trigger warning for suicide, but it's a message of hope. If you're struggling with this, please reach out, I promise someone cares <3





	Shadows

**__**

A phone call, at dinner time. Elias’ phone rings, once, twice. He doesn’t pick up. It’s family time. A third time.

“Can I please pick up before this phone drives us all crazy?” Elias asks, looking pointedly at his mother.

She gives a silent look to her husband, and concedes, “Fine, pick up, but you’re on dishwashing duty tonight.”

“Fine, whatever, tak,” Elias replies, taking off to his room with the phone already at his ear.

He doesn’t reappear before Sana retreats to her room too. She used to hang out with her family (or at least her parents, after Elias started high school and having “a social life, unlike you”) but now she can’t bring herself to spend so much time with them because she might slip, and let it show that no, not all is okay. That no, she doesn’t have friends, and no she doesn’t want to back to school and get the weird looks and the mean comments. So she stays in her room and occasionally chats with Jamila, but not too much so she won’t annoy the older girl enough that she would leave her too.

But the walls of the apartment are thin, and there’s no mistaking the repeated instances of, “Fuck. Fuck. I can’t… Fuck.,” coming from the room next door.

And there’s no missing the hushed conversation coming from the living room minutes later either, although she can’t quite make out what they’re talking about. And then there’s a knock on her door and when she answers, “Come in,” Elias’ face appears in the doorway. An unusual sight lately.

But he comes in and leans on the wall, trying to be casual, and says, “So, I’m going out.”

“Right,” she answers, lifting an eyebrow.

“Right, and I just, uh, wanted to say good night. Yeah, so, goodnight,” he finishes, his eyes shifty, hand reaching for the now silent phone in his pocket.

“Thanks, goodnight. Have fun,” she answers, turning back to her own phone.

But even without her eyes on him, there’s no mistaking the break in his voice as he answers, “Tak.”

 

She doesn’t understand until later that night when her parents think she’s asleep. She can’t really fall asleep lately, so she usually just lies in bed listening to noises of the night and counting down the days until the end of school like other people count sheep. Most nights by this time it’s silent, except maybe for the rustling noise of pages being turned by her parents reading in the living room, or the soft sprinkling of rain on her window. But today the silence is eerie, occasionally broken by hushed words she cannot make out, until the phone rings. The digital clock at her bedside indicates 22:55, which means it’s way too late for good news.

Padded footsteps on the creaky floors, apprehension but not surprise in her mother’s voice as she answers, “Hello?”.

She’s in the kitchen now, closer to Sana’s room so she can hear this side of the call clearly. “Elias, thank God… Any news?...Still waiting?...Is he… I’m so sorry. Please tell his mom. That I should’ve…No, you’re right…. No, you neither…Ok, I’ll keep my phone on, call me. Please give Tanja a hug…. Ok, bye, I love you.” Her mother’s words are laced with grief, and regret, and there’s this Tanja being mentioned and Sana feels like she should know who that is but she can’t quite put a face on the name. And it’s Elias calling, but yet all the tension that’s been there lately between him and their parents what with teenage angst and all that is gone and instead there’s this concern…

Something’s definitely wrong. Some more creaky footsteps, heavier: her father joining her mother in the kitchen. A moment of silence, she imagines him taking her in his arms (because even with everything going on right now, she knows that if there’s one thing she can always count on, it’s their love for her and Elias and for each other).

A deep sigh, “So, how is he? Even, right?”

Even. A tall lanky body, a mop of blond hair, a camera always nearby, a resonating laugh, a never full stomach ready for any food her mother can offer. Even, who hasn’t been around much lately. Has he been hurt? Has he been in an accident?

“They don’t know yet, they’re still waiting… I should have known, when he stopped coming around. Should have asked Elias more about it. I just never imagined…”

The silence is heavy as ever. “No one did. How could we? He’s so young… But, do they know why?”

Sana can hear every word now, but she doesn’t understand. Known what?

“No. I mean, not completely. Elias said it had to do with their fight maybe. With…with the Q’ran. I knew something happened between them, but I just never thought…And our kids wouldn’t, right? They’d tell us, before they felt that way? I worry, you know, about Sana, I know there’s something she’s not telling us, and I want to give her the room, to be her own person, to learn, to grow, but… I couldn’t lose her. I couldn’t lose either of them. I can’t even imagine what Tanja must feel right now…” her mother finishes, letting out a shaky breath.

“I know, I worry too. But I pray for them every day to know that we are there for them, and I know Allah would guide them if their thoughts strayed off the path, to come to us to help them back onto it.”

And suddenly it dawns on Sana: Even – kind, funny, artistic Even who always has a funny YouTube video to cheer her up when he’s there and she comes home from a particularly bad day – has not been in an accident. The hurt he faces right now is self-inflicted; the result of what has probably been a long battle with jet-black thoughts lurking in his mind. She’s sure of it now, no doubt in her mind, and something clenches in her stomach. Because she, too, has dark thoughts clouding her mind and she has thought about death way too much lately, has been all too aware of its presence whenever she has felt the wind on her face produced by a car passing a little close to her and thought – what if I simply stepped in front of it? And while she’s never really given herself an answer to that question, never really gone so far as to form the thought that, yes, stepping in front of that car and knowing another, new kind of suffering could end the one she faces now, it’s definitely been there. But suffering, she thinks now, is one thing, and nothingness, another. Because, even in the pit she finds herself in now, she cannot even imagine wishing for nothingness.

So she understands her mother, wishing she could have somehow known. And she can only imagine how the same thoughts are also coursing through her brother’s mind. But she also understands how it is so easy to miss, how it’s easy to chalk something up to moodiness, to teenage angst when everyone is so compelled to show their best self and smile for the camera, when the truth is so much easier to hide than to display for the world to see, to judge, to exploit. And she feels for Even, who she sees in a whole new light now, and who she wishes so hard to be alright, and for the boys, and she promises herself that, in the morning, she will share her darkness with someone. Because someone needs to start, to stop hiding even if the shadows seem safe, because, she realizes now, it’s all too easy for to let the shadows swallow you whole if you hide in them too long. But for now, she does the only thing she can do, from her bed in a room kilometers away from the hospital and several hours too late to alter the facts: she closes her eyes, and prays.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after someone from my study association committed suicide a few months ago. I didn't know him but it really shook me because he was held up as a role model in our community and seemed to have a great life, and also I wasn't feeling great myself at the time. I'm doing better now and I want anyone going through something like this that it can get better, and that you shouldn't be ashamed of the way you feel and of reaching out for help. 
> 
> My ask box is always open @breakthebeam on the Tumblr.


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